REVIEW: SPRING AND OTHER THINGS at Old Red Lion Pub Theatre 3 -7 & 10 -14 December 2024

‘a vulnerable and cathartic play that pushes towards hope and happiness.’ ★★★ ½ 

‘Spring & Other Things’ brims with anxiety: about global warming, war, mental health, humanity…and post-theatrically, about expressing all of these ideas through a play. Chloe Yates, both writer and performer, nervously announces that she’s going to tell us a story. Because sharing stories is important, whether they are difficult to recount or not. And while this story leans more towards prose than it does drama, it is a brave, semi-autobiographical tale that provides a rich insight into the brains and bodies cooped up in an adolescent psychiatric ward. 

As she counts down to her 18th birthday, Chloe tells us how she went from rock bottom – fantasising about suicide and coping with borderline personality disorder – to leaving her psychiatric unit and standing up for her beliefs. The play begins and ends with the same scene: Chloe preparing for a protest in Camden Market, talking to a statue of Amy Winehouse, finding the energy to fight for the planet because there are things that she loves about being alive. In between, the play builds to her 18th birthday, after which she must leave the adolescent ward she has come to love and move to an adult ward, forced to start again. 

Suicidal ideation is a challenging subject to stage, and it must be said that Yates treats it with a subtle care and deep understanding. Scenes are punctuated with moments of joy as she remembers what she loves about being alive, and the script never feels overly expositional or convoluted. The direction, by Georgia Leanne Harris, is neatly dramaturgical and makes great use of the black box space in the Old Red Lion Theatre. 

However, Spring & Other Things feels like the predecessor of a larger play, as it tells a personal story but also comments significantly on selfishness, capitalism and a broken care system. “Maybe a breakdown is a perfectly reasonable response to the world that you have created for us,” Chloe argues to her psychiatrists and the doctor with three houses who shows up once a month in a Land Rover to check on his surplus of anxious patients. I would have liked to meet these other characters, these villains that command great swathes of Chloe’s brain. Yates’s performance is delivered at the speed of a psychiatric patient’s mind and therefore we don’t sit with other characters for any length of time. She regularly reminds her audience that she hates public speaking, and therefore it would be interesting to see how this play might improve its drama and conflicts with other bodies on stage. 

As the show reaches its conclusion, audience members are invited to share what they love about being alive, and then we sing together. Yates has created a vulnerable and cathartic play that pushes towards hope and happiness. It certainly has potential, and I would be interested to see it break out of monologue and into something bigger. 

Photography: Tricia Wey

Spring & Other Things by Chloe Yates

Old Red Lion Pub Theatre

3rd-7th & 10th-14th December 2024

Box office: https://www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk/spring-other-things.html 

Written and performed by Chloe Yates

Directed by Georgia Leanne Harris

Produced by LJ Hope Productions